Birthday Walk

Some day my dogs think they will catch one of these . . .

What a day!

Garlic mustard, an invasive species that everyone is forever pulling out of the woods . . . I think we are losing the battle.

There is so much run-off from all the new homes and paved shopping plazas upstream, trees blow over in the slightest wind, and the woods have become pretty swampy.

The skunk cabbages love all that water. As do the mosquitoes.

I love the may apples. The flowers are under the umbrella leaves, so it's easy to miss them.

And of course the swamp buttercups . . .

We won the first battle against fracking under these woods. Now they are talking about logging the park for money. Most of the wood is so soggy, I am not sure even the loggers will want the wood. I am reminded of this:

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. ~Cree Indian Proverb

Sonnets to Oreos and Dove Bars

Keeping Quiet

Keeping Quiet
by Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll go.

-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Lost in the Forest

Lost in the Forest
by Neruda

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.
Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind
as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

I love Neruda. I love the linear quality of the trees here. And the hazy green light. I get a little dizzy and distracted by too many beautiful days in a row.

Spring

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
― Pablo Neruda

Hotel Utopia by Robert Miltner

The word, thups, came to me a while ago, and I first thought of thups as something to blame the quirks of my personality on. I would just think--It's my thups that did that. One of my quirks is that I take personal credit for my friends' successes. I think of them as a reason to celebrate, a reason to have an extra slice of pie, cup of tea, wine, or whatever I wish for. (At least that's what my thups would do.)

My friend, Robert Miltner's wonderful book, Hotel Utopia, has just been selected as a finalist for the Ohioana Award. So I have been eating pie and sipping cinnamon tea.

Here's an excerpt from his poem, "Greed."

Feel it, sleek as a snake's skin, slick as a tongue, hot as a loaded gun.

Remember the red crayon your hand pinched from the box and pocketed so you wouldn't have to share it with the other kids? The desire, the gluttony for color?

Greed is lean as a skeleton's shadow and will change its shape to meet your needs.

Go on, it whispers in your ear, No one is looking.

Thups

A little moment of celebration!

Thups

three minute fiction

Reading in Cleveland Tonight

Night under Footsteps
A poetry reading tonight at 7 PM
at Mac's Backs-Books On Coventry
featuring
Nin Andrews, Eric Anderson,
Robert Miltner, Karen Schubert

The Metamorphoses

Now that's a great name for a restaurant. I wonder if it's a chain?

from Distance by Tom Clark

In


The wind in the large
trees ignorant in
nocent of all harm

blue waves of rain
flail the sea.

by Tom Clark

from Distance.


The picture is titled "Out" or "Out of the Rain."
We have so much rain here most years, I prefer not to draw it.
But at least there's a tree, and a waveless sea. Oh well.

from Farewell My Lovelies by Diann Blakely

I have this wonderful new book, Farewell My Lovelies, sent to me by Diann Blakely. It's a beautiful book. Diann is a huge Plath fan, and I love this poem of hers. But I have always felt a little guilty that I am not totally enamored of Plath or Sexton. They make me feel somewhere between sad and suicidal, sort of like the girl depicted here.

The One Fifteen to Penn Station by Kevin Carey

An interview with Kevin Carey

668

"Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

Emily Dickinson

Gerard Manley Hopkins

from Inversnaid
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Certain poems, songs, paintings, and well, beautiful days make me feel like crying. Funny to think about that. Hopkins is my favorite tear jerker.

The VIDA Count & 1914

I keep thinking about the VIDA count and wondering how different our lives are than, say, 100 years ago. So I turned to my trusty Wonder World Encyclopedia for insights.

the VIDA count

The Bluebell by Emily Bronte

The Bluebell by Emily Bronte


The Bluebell is the sweetest flower
That waves in summer air:
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit's care.


There is a spell in purple heath
Too wildly, sadly dear;
The violet has a fragrant breath,
But fragrance will not cheer, . . .

(Okay, let's just say she was more interesting as a novelist, but hey.)

Fracking Comics

This post has been moved here on my new blog of fracking comics.


http://fracking-comics.blogspot.com/

Emily Dickinson Comic

Blake Comic

Shakespeare Comic

from Menus for Poets and Writers

Apologies to Yeats!

Menus for Poets and Writers

Beverages for Poets

Apologies to Keats, Dickinson, Hughes, Lowell, Coleridge, Johnson, Coleridge, Poe, Brooks, Stevens

The Poetry Café: Desserts for the Poet's Palate

Thanks to Lyle Daggett for the suggestion of the plums.

The poets represented: Coleridge, Burns, Berryman, Bishop, Frost, Arnold, Rilke, Blake, Williams, Keats

Specials for the Poet's Palate

I decided to update my poet's menus this week. Today is entrées. Desserts and beverages will follow . . .

I am borrowing Lyle Daggett's great addition to my last menu: A Coney Island Hot Dog of the Mind.

The poets represented: Stein, Blake, Burns, Dickinson, Coleridge, Hopkins, Burroughs, Wordsworth & Coleridge, Chaucer, Stevens, Ferlinghetti

Two Women Poets Who Decided to Start Their Own Press: Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Convy-Spaulding

I interviewed Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy for the Best American Poetry blog about their new press. You can read it here.

Dear Professor,

Dear Professor,

I sometimes think that physics professors
don't even live in the real world.
It's like you live
in some hypothetical world.
Do you ever look out of your window
and see a hypotheses?

I love this question because I think it's the reverse. I think most of us non-physicists live in a hypothetical world, or rather a world made up of misconceptions about how things actually work. I suspect that physics professors have to spend a lot of time trying to get their students see what they are actually seeing.

I remember a drawing class in college in which the professor had us draw without looking at the page. He wanted us to learn to look, really look, and trace what we saw, as it is, not as we think it is or should appear.

To quote Einstein:

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

Einstein also said:

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

The Karen and Nin Show

Karen Schubert and I are the featured readers today at Shawnee State University for the release party of their Women’s Center journal, Tapestries. We love to read together, so we're pretty excited.

I haven't had the chance to hear Karen read for a while. She's such a talented reader and poet. Here's a taste:

The rest of Karen's poem can be read here:

Karen's blog is In This Light.

I am not absolutely certain what I will be reading, but I promised to read a few from The Book of Orgasms. A few years ago, I announced at a reading that there would be no more orgasms and that I meant it. The audience was really unhappy with me.

Neil Carpathios's poem, "The Future of America"

Karen Schubert and I are going on the road today. We will be giving a reading at Shawnee State University where Neil Carpathios teaches. I love Neil's poetry. He's a poet whose work I have been following for years. I am so thrilled we have been invited to read there.
Above I've posted the beginning of one of his newer poems. The rest of the poem can be read in Mayday Magazine

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

I am trying to figure out what Twitter is all about. I have my account at @NinAndrew, but I don't know what I am supposed to tweet . . .